Most Backward Classes Vigilant Forum, a body of representatives from 102 most backward communities presently under category 2A, petitioned Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Tuesday, opposing any new inclusion under the category, including Panchamasali Lingayats.
The forum also threatened to organise the 102 communities and take to the streets if their interests were hurt.
With reservation and reclassification demand from various communities, the Chief Minister recently directed the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes to study the feasibility of including Panchamasali Lingayats under category 2A, which the forum said was “not a responsible move”.
The non-partisan forum, chaired by Mukhyamantri Chandru, was formed recently to lobby the interests of these communities, in the light of demands by several communities to be included under category 2A.
The forum, in its four-page memorandum to the Chief Minister, argued that 102 communities presently under category 2A were landless artisan communities, who are already suffering owing to the loss of traditional community jobs. “Panchamasali Lingayats by their own admission are landowning agriculturists. It is unfair and immoral to include them under category 2A,” the forum argued.
Further, the forum demanded that the State government must abandon plans to form a three-member committee chaired by a retired judge to look into demands for reservation that have come up in the State of late.
“The Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes, formed as per the Supreme Court orders, is a constitutional body, which is tasked with social justice and reservation matrix in the State. Any other committee is both immoral and unnecessary,” the forum said. It further argued that the only scientific way to resolve all the reservation issues, is to accept the Socio Economic Survey or caste census and redraw the reservation matrix based on its findings.
A delegation of the forum also met Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Siddaramaiah and appealed to him to put pressure on the State government to fulfil all the three demands of the forum.
Meanwhile, JD(S) leader and former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy has questioned “imbalance” in the allocation of funds to communities in the State Budget for 2021-22.
“For 16 corporations working for welfare of communities, the Budget allocates a total of ₹500 crore. But it allocates ₹500 crore each for Veersshaiva-Lingayats and Vokkaligas. In the Budget I presented, I had allocated funds in the range of ₹1 crore to ₹3 crore to around 108 microscopic minority communities that were not even heard of. This government discontinued all those schemes and did not give funds to these communities. How fair is it?” he questioned.
